


Boys and Blood and Banter

by youngwitchin



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Landlord AU, M/M, Zuko is an Awkward Turtleduck, artist sokka, no beta we die like men, sokka works in a coffee shop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-29
Updated: 2020-07-29
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:01:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25591705
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youngwitchin/pseuds/youngwitchin
Summary: Now, that was intriguing. If he didn’t have to pay rent this month, that meant he could make a decent payment on his student loan debt, and maybe buy a pair of socks that didn’t have holes in them. “How much blood are we talking here?”AKA the one-shot no one asked for in which Zuko is Sokka's landlord and Sokka makes up for his late rent payments in blood. Based on the writing prompt "Your landlord is a vampire, so he offers you a deal. You can pay your rent in money… or in blood." from writing.prompt.s on instagram!
Relationships: Aang/Katara (Avatar), Sokka/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 7
Kudos: 244





	Boys and Blood and Banter

**Author's Note:**

> Hi guys! This is the first work I've ever posted on here so I hope I've got the format and all that correct. This is unedited and probably will stay that way so have fun overlooking my inevitable grammatical mistakes. Credit for the prompt goes to writing.prompt.s on Instagram. Thanks for reading!

Your landlord is a vampire, so he offers you a deal. You can pay your rent in money… or in blood. 

Sokka knew he should’ve just stayed at Katara’s apartment. It was affordable, she did his laundry, and every Thursday night she’d make a traditional meal from their tribe. Of course they fought, what siblings/roommates didn’t? He was well accustomed to being battered by his little sister for leaving the toilet seat up, or forgetting to empty the dishwasher. Still, he had it pretty good. He was fine living with his sister, just not his sister and her boyfriend. Now, don’t misunderstand. Aang and Sokka were close friends, and Aang was the perfect mediator when the siblings came close to murdering each other. The tattooed boy did want to be a therapist, after all, and he got his fair share of practice on his roommates.   
Despite all this, Sokka had a reasonable amount of encouragement to find his own place. First of all, he and Katara both needed a certain amount of privacy, especially after Aang moved in. It was awkward enough when he’d wake up to Katara eating breakfast with whoever he’d brought home to sleep with the night before. When he caught Aang in the bathroom taking some unsavory selfies, he figured it was time to start packing. Secondly, Sokka was twenty-four years old. He wanted to be able to sleep in as late as he wanted on the weekends without his mother-like sister breathing down his neck about wasting the day. He wanted to have free reign over the TV on a weeknight while unwinding after a long day.   
So, with the help of his dear roommates, he found himself a one-bedroom that was equally distant from the busy cafe where he worked in the daytime, and the animation studio he interned at in the evenings. For the first couple of months it worked out perfectly well. He brought home whoever he wanted without fear of judgement, he threw his dirty socks on the bathroom floor and waited a week to pick them up, and he stopped by Katara’s every Thursday for dinner. Sokka was reaping the benefits of the young and independent life. That is, until his rent was raised by $150 each month. Suddenly, he was eating cup noodles three nights a week for dinner, buying the cheap body wash at the store, and having Aang sneak him back onto Katara’s Netflix account.   
Stupid landlords and their stupid rent.   
If there was one thing Sokka was set on, however, it was that he was not going to ask for help. He already felt like the disappointment child, given Katara’s quick climb through medical school and his art degree that he had yet to find a job with. Which is what led him to where he is now. Tips were low, as they tended to be in the first months of the year, and Sokka had been $50 short of rent for the past two months. Last month, he’d received a notice under his door that the remainder of the payment would be added on to the next month’s rent. Well, the next month’s rent was now, and Sokka still didn’t have enough to cover the full cost, let alone the extra from the previous charge. Essentially, he was fucked. He would have to ask Katara or his dad to lend him the money to avoid being evicted, and then pray to the moon spirit that next month’s pay was enough to cover his debts.   
It was almost 11pm on a Sunday when three sharp knocks came at the door, breaking Sokka from his entranced watching of some Marvel movie. Dragging a hand down his face, he trudged over. When his hand reached out for the door handle, he finally realized it was a little odd for someone to be at his door that late with no prior warning. Sokka quietly grabbed a knife from the kitchen, tucking it into the back of his sweatpants’ waistband. He then peered through the peephole, although what he saw didn’t really clear up any of the boy’s confusion.   
Standing on his doormat was a boy - man, technically, - of about his age. He had shaggy black hair, was probably an inch or two taller than Sokka, and held a stack of papers in his hand. And a distinct scar around one of his eyes. More curious than concerned at this point, Sokka pulled the door open.   
“Uhm, hey?”   
“Good evening,” the stranger replied in a husky voice, “I’m here to discuss the payments on your rent, and some of the options you have.”   
Curiosity quickly morphed into irritation, edging on anger. Seriously? His landlords couldn’t have waited until the morning to bother him about his financial failures? He was gearing up for a rant on capitalism when the stranger asked, “Do you mind if I step in? This will only take a couple moments.”   
In lieu of speaking, Sokka opened the door wider, letting the dark haired boy step in and following him over to the dining table. With his exhaustion-addled brain, he hadn’t thought to ask the dude for proof that he was building management before letting him in. Still, he had his trusty knife, and it wasn’t too late to gather some intel.   
“So are you the building manager or something?” Sokka said as he sat across from his visitor.   
“For the time, yes,” he explained, smoothing out his decidedly designer sweater. “I’m managing this building for my uncle while he handles personal affairs. Now, Mr. Imeq, your account has not held the sufficient funds for rent withdrawal for the past two months. I’m assuming you’ve received the previous notices concerning this matter?”  
Sokka shifted nervously, “Yes. But I’m expecting my work to pick up soon, and I should catch up as quickly as possible.” Sokka was talking out of his ass, of course. There was no guarantee that he wouldn’t make even less next month.   
“Our company has a one-month forgiveness policy, as you can see here on your rent agreement,” with pale, manicured fingers, he slid over a paper with Sokka’s signature on it. The policy in question was circled in red. Shit. “After being provided with the opportunity to pay the remainder of last month’s rent this past payment, you were unable to deliver the proper funds. If you can’t settle your debts by the end of this month, we’ll have to ask you to find other accommodations.”   
So, he was being kicked out. Sokka plastered a saccharine smile on his face and stood abruptly. “Can I get you anything to drink?” He was gonna need more than water to get through this conversation.   
The young boy looked briefly confused, but quickly recovered, “Tea, if you have any.”   
First, this dude came by to tell him he was losing his apartment. Now, he’s gonna make Sokka go to the trouble of boiling water, opening a tea bag, gods forbid scoop out his good farmer's market honey that he’d gotten for Christmas! He tried not to take it out on this kid for his father’s policies. He was probably like Sokka, after all, just working the most available job to get by until he could stand on his own two feet.   
Sokka turned around to walk into the kitchen, and was almost shat himself when he heard the sound of a chair slamming out behind him.   
“Why do you have a knife?!”   
“Oh!” Sokka blushed and reached for his back unthinkingly to remove the offending utensil. Of course, in his hurry, he forgot that knives are, well, sharp. Thankfully, he owned cheap, fairly blunt cutlery. Still, he cut the pads of his fingers deeply enough to draw blood. “When a stranger wanted to come in in the middle of the night, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to have some self defense. See where that got me,” he winced as he cradled his injured hand.   
“Oh.” The calm confidence from before had faded, and now the other boy was looking faint and weary, staring in horror at the blood running down Sokka’s wrist. “I can… I can come back tomorrow.”   
“Shit, I’m sorry,” the tan boy turned around to go towards the sink. He expected to hear footsteps on their way out, but it seemed this guy was glued to his spot. Sokka knew people were afraid of blood, but he hadn’t realized it could be this extreme. “Are you sure you need to be walking around right now? You look a little out of it.”  
“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine.”   
Sokka wasn’t so sure about that. “Here, go sit down and I’ll get you some crackers or something.”   
There was no response, but Sokka was a little too busy bandaging himself up to care about nursing someone else. As long as he didn’t hear the sounds of someone wretching all over his tile floor, he couldn’t be bothered. He was way too tired for everything that had happened tonight already.   
Bless the man’s heart, it was only going to get weirder.   
With his now-wrapped up hand hanging at his side and the other holding a sleeve of Saltines, Sokka swiveled around to face his pale visitor. To his resigned surprise, said visitor was now less than five feet from him. His pupils were blown out so that the golden brown of his iris was barely visible.   
“Hey… buddy.”   
“You have blood on your shirt,” he near-whispered back.   
Sokka looked down, and indeed, his white crew neck was now stained with hand-blood. He wondered briefly if he could sell it on Etsy and pull in some extra cash to cover his bills. By the time he looked back up, the boy was even closer. Sokka backed up to the counter, instinctually prepared to grab the knife again and protect himself.   
“There’s no comfortable way to phrase this,” the dark-haired man started. “But I’m in a position to help you with your rent payment, if you could provide something for me in return.”   
“You mean, like, a blowjob? You’re cute and all, but I don’t even know your name, so I think I’ll stick to cash,” Sokka responded uncomfortably. He was working up another blush and running a mental list of ways to get the man out of his apartment that would prevent him from being evicted while also maybe helping him receive the guy’s number. Could you blame him? Sokka didn’t necessarily appreciate being propositioned, but he couldn’t deny the butterflies in his stomach at the stranger’s closeness.   
Well, maybe that was just adrenaline, but still.   
“No, I - ” he broke off in frustration, fisting his hands in that black hair. “My name is Zuko. And I guess, technically, I’m a vampire.”   
Hadn’t Katara taken a lecture on taking care of mentally unstable patients? He tried to remember the methods of calming down a delusional person without physical force. Evidently, Sokka would need to deploy those methods tonight. Life never could give him a break, could it?   
Seeing the look on his face, Zuko continued, “I’m not crazy, look!” He pulled back his upper lip to reveal a sharper than usual set of canines.   
Sokka’s brain rushed towards rationale. So, the guy had weird teeth. Didn’t mean anything, and maybe they were implants. He could’ve sworn he’d seen a Vox video about vampire-esque dentures at some point.   
“What I’m trying to say is that if you give me some of your blood, I’ll forgive your debt. And your payment for this month.”   
Now, that was intriguing. If he didn’t have to pay rent this month, that meant he could make a decent payment on his student loan debt, and maybe buy a pair of socks that didn’t have holes in them. “How much blood are we talking here?”   
Zuko shrugged, “A pint, a pint and a half.” His face was a mask of seriousness, and Sokka was biding his time for the moment he’d say “sike!” and laugh at Sokka’s poverty.  
“Alright, let’s do it,” it’s not like he hadn’t done weird things for money in the past, what was one more odd experience?  
Sokka went to the fridge and grabbed a handle of Tito’s while Zuko watched him with scepticism in his eyes. In Sokka's opinion, he was not the person who should be being scrutinized for what he drank at that moment. “Cheers!” Sokka swigged straight from the bottle what was somewhere between two and three shots. After the fact, he gagged and grimaced, but the liquor was already warming his insides, giving him the confidence to go through with this.   
“How do you wanna do this?” he asked once he’d washed the vodka taste from his mouth with orange juice.   
“I can drink straight from your wrist, that would be the easiest. You will be sore for a while, though.”   
“No, that won’t work,” Sokka insisted. He was ambidextrous and needed both wrists in working condition for both his art and to make drinks at work. “Can’t we do something else?”   
Zuko sighed, more as an expression of nerves than out of exasperation, if his shaky hands were anything to go by. “Your neck, then.”   
In his head, Sokka figured that would be just like a hickey, and he’d had his fair share of going to work sporting those. That, he could live with. He quietly nodded and made his way over to the sofa. If he was going to have his goddamn blood sucked, he was going to be comfortable while it happened. Zuko followed him, sitting a respectful distance away from the brunet boy. Except that respect wasn’t what Sokka needed at the time, and they’d need to be close to get this over with. He grunted and scooted his way over to the vampire-boy-whateverthefuck. And if you’d asked him that night, he was nervous because of the threat of having his body drained dry, not because he was sitting close to a hot boy.   
“Well?”   
It was an odd feeling. One moment, he was living his life as a normal dude, the neck, teeth were sinking into his jugular and pulling copious amounts of blood out. Faintly, he thought that it wasn’t so bad, actually, especially given the hot breath that spanned his neck and the nose softly pushing at his jawline. In another context, he might have even popped a boner. Before he knew it though, it was over, and Zuko was pulling back with a blissed-out look on his face. Yeah, Sokka could definitely get used to that.   
“So, are you okay?” Zuko asked, once he’d recovered from whatever state of euphoria drinking Sokka’s blood had put him in.   
“M’okay,” Sokka yawned, “D’we need to sign anything ‘bout the rent, or…” his voice slurred and drawled off as he grew sleepier and sleepier.   
Zuko didn’t say anything, instead standing up, and pulling Sokka up with him by the armpits. He manhandled the sleepy boy into a standing position and began dragging him in the direction of the bedroom.   
“Hey, how d’you know where my room is?”  
“Uh, my dad built the complex. All the units look the same.”   
Sokka giggled and let his head slump onto Zuko’s broad shoulder. Wow, Zuko had nice shoulders. He’d really like to get a good grip on them, see just how strong the boy could be. Maybe he even had superhuman vampire strength.   
In retrospect, it might not have been a good idea to chug vodka before donating blood to his landlord. The alcohol wouldn’t have had the chance to enter his bloodstream in a considerable capacity before Zuko drank from him, but it was sure starting to hit now. Plus, he was pretty sure the pretty boy had taken more than just a pint.   
Then Sokka’s head hit the pillow, and he was out before he could even say goodbye.   
****  
For the next two months, no money was drawn from Sokka’s account to charge for his apartment’s rent. It was a financial blessing that he put in effort to hide, lest he have to explain to Katara what he’d done on a desperate whim.   
There was a bit of a problem, though. He couldn’t get that vampiric bastard out of his head. Call him kinky, but he’d spent a fair share of time pondering the gentle hand on his thigh and the shy smile Zuko had given him right before drinking his blood. He was infuriatingly cute for him to be what most cultures would consider a monster parading in human form. Although, maybe that was part of his ploy. Lure the blood bags in with the promise of money, keep them coming with a ridiculous level of attraction.   
The first couple weeks, he’d felt ashamed of his crush, hurrying through the common spaces of the apartment complex as quickly as he could to prevent a second meeting. He refused to do anything regarding his pent up romantic and sexual frustration, until one night he caved and brought someone home with him. The morning after, Sokka had a sense of pride in himself, believing the storm to have passed, allowing him to return to his bachelor ways. Except that after that, he found himself intentionally lingering in the lobby and hallways with his hookups. An outsider might have assumed that Sokka was just a bit of an exhibitionist. However, he’d spent enough time helping Aang study for psychology finals to know there was a deeper point to his actions. He secretly wanted Zuko to see him flirting and getting kissed by random, hot people. And he wanted the boy to be jealous.   
After a consuming bout of soul-searching in regards to his overall horniness for his landlord, Sokka decided he would blow off some steam at the community pool. It had just opened for the season, and the water was barely warm enough to be swimmable. Cold water meant two good things for Sokka, though: it would drive off crowds he might have to share the pool with, and help him stay cool and alert.   
And if Zuko came by, it wouldn’t hurt for Sokka to have little privacy.   
He was swimming laps when a familiar rough voice said, “You’ll get pneumonia if you’re not careful.”  
Surprised, Sokka gasped, taking a mouthful of pool water into his lungs in the process. He floundered his way to the concrete pool’s edge, coughing and spluttering for a minute until he could get his breathing back under control. So much for making a smooth entrance into Zuko’s heart. At this point, he’d be lucky if he could get through the doorway.   
“I didn’t mean to startle you, I’m sorry,” Zuko said bashedly, rubbing the back of his neck.   
Sokka hoisted himself out of the water, not missing the way the other boy’s gaze lingered across his arms and torso. He thanked the moon that he’d been caught here, with his shirt off and his hair dripping around his face. Sokka was self-aware enough to know he looked good.   
“It’s okay. How have you been?”  
Zuko Shifted his weight from foot to foot, “Decent. I wanted to apologize for my behaviors the other night. It was inexcusable and if you’d like help getting out of your lease without penalty, I’ll arrange for you to find another apartment at one of our locations.”   
He was winded when he finished, not having taken a breath during the entire spiel. Sokka would have giggled imagining the dark haired boy practicing in the mirror, if he weren’t so thrown off by what he was hearing.   
“You don’t need to apologize. We both agreed to it and it worked out fine for both of us, as far as I can tell,” he reassured while towel drying his hair.   
“But, you’ve been darting around the apartment complex like someone’s after you,” Zuko’s voice was almost tender with guilt, “And you feel the need to have… bodyguards… protecting you when you’re in the common areas. I’ve made you uncomfortable and now I need to fix that.”  
Bodyguards? Sokka struggled to keep up with the man’s assumptions. So, he had a type, and it tended on the muscly side, but that wasn’t for self-preservation purposes. Quite the opposite, actually.   
Sokka stood to walk closer to Zuko, who looked so unsure of himself in his black jeans and red band t-shirt. Sokka thought he looked good, but that wasn’t what he needed to focus on right then. “I’m not sure how the misunderstanding happened, but I’ve not been doing anything because I feel endangered, or pressured, or anything like that.” He faltered there, trying to make up his mind about whether to spill his guts or not.   
“So why all the odd behavior?”  
“How about you come up for that cup of tea I promised you, bitey boy?”   
They went up to Sokka’s third-story apartment in silence. In other circumstances, Zuko might have snapped at Sokka about him dripping pool water through the carpeted halls. Instead, he kept his mouth shut, feeling too ashamed to properly chastise the half-naked boy. The half-naked part didn’t exactly help, either.   
When they got inside, Sokka excused himself to go change, leaving Zuko hanging around awkwardly in the kitchen. He came back in a pair of grey sweatpants and a blue tank top with open sides. If he was gonna play, he was gonna play his cards right, which meant playing up the obvious attention garnered by his body. He filled the kettle with water from the sink and set it on the stove, flexing his arm muscles as he did so.   
“Let’s sit down,” he told Zuko, pulling out a chair for himself at the table. It was highly reminiscent of the last time they’d conversed. He wondered how he could be so incredibly intrigued by the other boy when he knew so little about him. “Are you in school?”  
Zuko seemed baffled at the direction of the conversation. Still, he played along. “No, I’m taking a gap year before I start teaching.”   
“Oh, you’re gonna be a teacher! That’s awesome. Which grade?” Sokka passes Zuko a variety box of teas that Suki had given him ages ago, insisting he become more tea-cultured if he was gonna work at her coffee shop.   
“Third and fourth,” Zuko picked out a jasmine tea, which Sokka promptly popped in a mug. “Do you have honey?”  
Yes, Sokka had honey. He’d been saving the last couple teaspoons of his fancy, locally harvested honey for the off-chance that Zuko came by again. Truly, he was a weak man. He grew steadily weaker thinking of Zuko interacting with a bunch of snotty-nosed, imaginative ten year olds. He could picture the paler man sat legs-crossed on a floor mat, reading rhythmically as his students sat, captivated, around him. It was dangerously heart-warming.   
They sat quietly across each other at the kitchen table for several moments, Zuko blowing on his tea to cool it and Sokka sipping on a Red Bull. Finally, Zuko realized that Sokka was waiting for him to take the lead in the conversation, and spoke up.  
“What do you do?”  
“I work at a coffee shop right now,” Sokka sighed, “But I have a bachelor’s degree in digital arts. I’m interning nights at an animation studio, but I can’t tell if that’s gonna go anywhere.”   
Zuko perked up, “Have you heard of Piandao studios? He’s friends with my uncle, so I can put in a good word for you.”   
Mouth agape, Sokka squeaked, “You know Piandao?” It was a dream job for him. Then, the realization hit that he should really not take further advantage of this guy, “Listen, you don’t have to keep trying to make something up to me. I told you, there’s no bad blood between us. Heh, bad blood, get it?”   
“I was actually just being friendly, but if you’re not interested, I can leave you be,” Zuko replied with a hint of mischief in his voice.   
Was this guy actually teasing him? Wow. Sokka kinda liked it.   
“Well, I’m not gonna be mad if you just happen to slip him my portfolio,” Sokka shrugged with manufactured nonchalance. “Or if you wanted to give him my phone number to arrange an interview.”   
“To do that, Mr. Imeq, I would need to have your number. So, unless you’re offering it up…”   
Sokka grinned, gesturing for Zuko to hand him his phone. He typed in his number, giving his contact the name “blood bag from apartment 304.”   
“You’ve ingested my blood, I think we’re past the last-name basis. Call me Sokka,” he said, passing the phone back when he finished.   
“Sokka,” Zuko tested the name out, much to the tan boy’s pleasure, “If you aren’t afraid or angry, why were you acting so weird for the past couple months?:  
Sokka deflected, “If I never saw you in the building, how did you know I was acting weird?”   
Zuko blushed, stammering, “I may or may not have been keeping an eye out on the security cameras.” He stared intently into his half-empty cup of tea, refusing to make eye contact.   
“Did you just admit to stalking me? I don’t know if I should be flattered or offended.”  
“I wanted to make sure you were okay after… you know. And I didn’t want you leading a group of priests in here to exorcise me, either,” Zuko admitted.   
He wanted to make sure Sokka was okay! His heart was doing cartwheels and Sokka couldn’t complain. However, he had remaining questions that he’d still like to collect answers to.   
“Why did you need to drink my blood, anyways?” he said as casually as he could muster, “Don’t you vampires have other ways of getting food?”   
Zuko grew timid at the question. “Usually, yes. My uncle, Iroh - you’ve probably met him, since he usually manages this building - has helped me get blood since I was first infected through his ties at the hospital. But, his son died at the end of last year, and he’s been traveling to cope with the loss ever since. I only need blood once a month, so I didn’t find it necessary to pester him with my issues until he returns. I was initially taking donations from some acquaintances, but very few people know about my condition. I hadn’t fed in a month and a half when I came to your apartment, and when you cut your finger, I couldn’t wait any longer.” He traced the rim of his mug with his index finger. It was evident that he was embarrassed by himself.   
“I’m not sure how all this vampire mumbo-jumbo works,” Sokka asserted, grabbing Zuko’s wrist in his right hand, “But you shouldn’t be embarrassed of it. It’s just like medicine, right? Like, uh, dialysis or something. You have to do it every so often to survive, but it’s not bad, or shameful. It’s just a part of your life.”  
Zuko nodded, although he was obviously doing his best to not get emotional, ‘Thank you for that, but I don’t deserve your comfort.”  
“Yes, you do. Zuko, the reason I was avoiding you was,” his heart raced in his chest, “ugh, this should not be so hard!” Sokka brought his hands up to cover his face, mumbling through his fingers, “I think you’re cute.”   
“You think I’m mute?” Zuko reached out for Sokka, taking hold of his forearm to pull his hand away from his face. “But I’m talking right now!”  
Sokka groaned miserably, now forced to stare the other boy down in those golden eyes. “I think you’re cute, okay?”   
Zuko went dead silent. For several moments, Sokka worried that he had messed up astronomically. The guy was probably straight, and was now feeling violated because of Sokka’s lack of self control. Great, this was exactly what he’d worried about! He should have taken the option to move far away before he had made an absolute fool of himself.   
Then, quietly, Zuko returned. “I think you’re cute, too,” he slid his hand down Sokka’s forearm where it rested to grasp his hand.   
“Do you wanna go on a date?” Sokka blurted.   
****  
The date was every bit as fun as Sokka had hoped for. They got ice cream, and watched a movie in the park, and Zuko held Sokka’s hand when they walked down the dimly lit streets back to the apartments, talking the whole way.   
“Zuko, can I ask you something personal?”  
His back stiffened but he nodded, as if anticipating this moment.   
Sokka slowed his gait, leaning further into Zuko’s warmth as the evening cooled the city. “How did you get your scar?”   
Zuko squeezed his hand and sighed. “I was thirteen when I became what I am. I was walking home from jiu jitsu alone because my dad was too busy at the office to come get me. Some lady cornered me when I was taking a shortcut through an alley, and the rest is history.” He ran his spare hand through his hair, and Sokka envied that hand like hell. “The next month was pretty miserable as my body healed from what had happened. My uncle is a very superstitious man, so he figured it out first. He helped me to get through it while my father shamed me for being weak and neglected to acknowledge me.”  
“If it’s too much, you don’t have to say it all tonight,” Sokka interjected, sensing the brevity of the subject.   
“I want you around for a while, Sokka. I might as well tell you now rather than later.”  
This would have been enough to knock Sokka off his feet, had he not been clutching onto Zuko already for support. He signaled for the scarred boy to continue, listening intently.   
“When my father finally figured out what was going on, he was pissed off, to say the least. He’s a businessman, so his world is all rationality, numbers, and profit. Having something from the mythical world living in his household was too much for him. So, he took a tale he’d read in his country about vampires being burned at the stake, and turned it inwards. I came home from school and he was ready for me with a blowtorch in hand.   
“I managed to crawl to the phone and call uncle. He was there in not even ten minutes, and I moved into my cousin’s old room. Uncle helped me get through school and figure out what I want to do with my life. I decided before I’d graduated high school that I wanted to work with children and help prevent them from suffering what I went through.”   
“Zuko,” Sokka breathed, placing his hands on either side of the boy’s face. He pressed their foreheads together, hoping to communicate what he was having difficulty putting into words with that gesture.   
“Well, that’s me,” Zuko laughed awkwardly, “What’s your trauma?”  
“My mother’s dead,” Sokka shrugged.   
“Mine is too…”  
At first, they were stuck in a clumsy stillness, neither one knowing what was appropriate to say. Then, they both began to chuckle, having no choice but to make light of their issues. Sokka imagined how weird they must’ve looked. Two young men, holding each other close on an empty street, laughing with tears in their eyes.   
Zuko’s stomach growled loudly, breaking them from their laughter.   
“Do you wanna come back to my place for some popcorn and shitty sitcoms?” Sokka tucked a loose strand of hair behind the taller boy’s ear.   
Zuko smiled shyly, “It’s not that type of hungry.”   
Sokka smirked. He was more than willing to make another donation.


End file.
